Studies in Focus

The focus mechanism is constantly a theoretical proposition, a "Will it come off?" artistic gambit.  Not over-aestheticized, not psychologically motivated, it is the physics of indexicality imposed upon a dramatic art and that most realizes Bazin's ideal of cinema as the art imposed on by reality (intrinsically and at long last), that liberates through the indexical the visual art from its fanatical search for verisimilitude, and at its most realized is found in works' intimate aesthetic relationship with the indexical reality.

(Hooper's Amazing Stories episode, "Miss Stardust")